Canada’s organic industry has been so focused on developing a federal regulation that it may have dropped the ball on what is going to happen at a provincial level, says a senior organic official.
The Organic Products Regulations, which come into full force Dec. 14, 2008, will govern interprovincial and international trade, but don’t include rules for trade that never crosses provincial boundaries.
“I suspect it’s a serious gap,” said Laura Telford, executive director of Canadian Organic Growers.
Provincial governments are responsible for regulating intraprovincial organic trade, but a lot of provinces that have explored the idea of mimicking the new federal regulation have been scared away by inspection costs.
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“Some provinces have decided they’re not going to do it, which is a little bit frightening because we don’t want this gap to
exist,” Telford said.
She worries that in the absence of a provincial regulation, customers might be duped at places such as farmers’ markets where locally produced goods are sold directly to consumers.
Studies commissioned by the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada estimate that farmers’ markets accounted for $50 million of organic food sales in 2006. Telford said customers visiting those markets could end up paying a premium for a product that has not been properly certified if nobody is overseeing intraprovincial trade.
“It could be a problem.”
Not according to Michel Saumur, manager of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s Canada Organic Office.
The federal government is responsible for fraudulent or misleading claims on food products as set out in the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act and the Food and Drugs Act.
“Those regulations are there to protect the consumer,” Saumur said.
If his office receives a complaint of organic fraud involving intraprovincial trade, he will pass it on to Health Canada’s consumer protection branch.
Telford said she hasn’t heard anyone talk about applying those regulations to products sold at farmers’ markets. Instead, they seem to encompass only packaged goods.
However, Saumur said they apply to any fraudulent claim. For instance, if a farmers’ market vendor claims all of its products are organic but most are not, it would be deemed a misleading advertising claim.
Fraud isn’t the only concern. In a recent article in Canadian Organic Growers’ magazine, the group’s Manitoba chapter said the existing certification system is too expensive for small-scale producers who want to sell direct to consumers in their home province.
The chapter wants Manitoba to follow British Columbia’s lead by establishing a cheaper and less cumbersome certification system for “low-risk” small-scale producers.
Telford said that is a country-wide concern. The alternate certification system could shift from an annual inspection to one every two years for low-risk producers who have been certified in the past and are not located next to a producer of genetically modified crops.
Ideally, even small-scale producers selling goods will see value in using the Canada Organic label and will voluntarily comply with federal regulation, which would resolve outstanding intraprovincial trade issues, she said.
